I made a video from my trip to Belize back in January. If I can figure out how to embed a vimeo link I will add it later.

I downloaded a trial copy of Final Cut Pro X for this. It's definitely a big change from Version 7 that I use at work. It's just about unusable on my ancient iMac, though, I pretty much gave up trying to edit to the music. Playback was very choppy.

Make sure you select "Create Optimized Media" when you import your footage before you completely give up on your ancient iMac. Playing certain video formats natively is a real haul for older processors, but if you let it transcode to ProRes it goes a lot smoother. Sometimes.

You know, now that you mention it, I don't think I did that. I always convert stuff to ProRes at work. I guess I'll have to get back out and shoot some more video to test it out.

Matt, I'm obliged to point you to the Compression Guidelines page - https://vimeo.com/help/guidelines - that page has tutorial videos and specs you should be exporting your videos to for Vimeo. If you're using FCX you can upload directly to Vimeo by going to Share > Vimeo.

I'm an audio guy, but I just forked over for Adobe Creative Cloud. Now I can media all the things.

I'm not a video guy, but I have some digital camcorder footage that I'd like to edit together and give to somebody. The problem is that it filmed in a pretty goofy resolution: 704x480, 29 fps, 48 kHz audio, .mpg format.

What's the best course of action here? My plan was to convert all the source material up to 1080 or 720 (so's it can be played back on a regular TV) using Adobe Media Encoder and then edit my video together in Premiere. No matter what preset I use in Premiere it never matches quite right and the aspect ratio is off, so it best to convert first?

I'm an audio guy, but I just forked over for Adobe Creative Cloud. Now I can media all the things.

I'm not a video guy, but I have some digital camcorder footage that I'd like to edit together and give to somebody. The problem is that it filmed in a pretty goofy resolution: 704x480, 29 fps, 48 kHz audio, .mpg format.

What's the best course of action here? My plan was to convert all the source material up to 1080 or 720 (so's it can be played back on a regular TV) using Adobe Media Encoder and then edit my video together in Premiere. No matter what preset I use in Premiere it never matches quite right and the aspect ratio is off, so it best to convert first?

When you say you want it so it can be 'played back on a regular TV' what do you mean? Like on a set-top box or what?

I haven't used Media Encoder in awhile (let alone the Creative Cloud... ugh) but it sounds like it's stretching the video to fit a standard 16:9 aspect ratio. Not sure what your endgame is, but there should be an option to change the resolution you're exporting; ideally you'll want to match the resolution of your source material, in this case 704x480.

I'd like to give it to someone and have them watch it in 1080p on their TV, be that via disc or their HTPC.

I was able to wrangle AME to do what I want - the original footage now exists in 1080p with black bars on the sides. And Creative Cloud is pretty nice, IMO. I already owned Audition CS6, so it's only $20 for... everything.

I'd like to give it to someone and have them watch it in 1080p on their TV, be that via disc or their HTPC.

I was able to wrangle AME to do what I want - the original footage now exists in 1080p with black bars on the sides. And Creative Cloud is pretty nice, IMO. I already owned Audition CS6, so it's only $20 for... everything.

I haven't looked into Creative Cloud yet, but as a video editor who knows all the major software EXCEPT Premiere, I'm thinking it might be a great way to dip my toes in.

What's the deal you got? It was only $20 because you already owned some Adobe software? Or is that one of the standard pricing tiers?

I've owned Audition for years, back from when it was v1.5. I took some of my recent editing income and updated to CS6 last year (and it's awesome) and have been very happy with it. I had been hemming and hawing about CC but saw that they have a promo going on where you get a full subscription for $20/mo for 12 months IF you already have a valid license for a current CS6 Adobe product. It's $50 month normally, but they usually have some kind of promotion going on.

So I signed up and got started and it's pretty darn cool. It's basically Steam for Adobe products. There's a little client and all of the products are listed with an "install" button. Want Illustrator? One click - go have a sandwich and it's there when you get back. Photoshop? Premiere? After Effects? One click away (each). They're all the full versions, no restrictions.

In my case I don't have a terribly awesome business reason for it, as most of what I want to do is personal. But the cost is less than one hour of side work a month, so I bit. After years and years of using GIMP I'm finally using Photoshop and yeah... GIMP ain't no Photoshop.